


Search Engine

by Anonymous



Series: Soulmate AU [1]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Awkward Romance, F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24829930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Jake has been trying to figure out soulmarks and soulmates on and off for pretty much all is life.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Kevin Cozner/Ray Holt
Series: Soulmate AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809388
Comments: 12
Kudos: 130
Collections: Anonymous





	Search Engine

The world is a weird place, Jake thinks, tracing the stupid soulmark on the inside of his left forearm. His is a word or part of a word - which, according to an article he is currently reading in the New York Times, is true for 57.8 percent of the world population. 18.6 percent have numbers, 19.4 percent symbols and for the remaining 4.2 it just says misc/undisclosed…

Jake frowns at the article on his computer screen.

“Can that be right?” he asks the bullpen at large after reciting the stats. 

Out of nowhere, Santiago leans over his shoulder and he feels a strange prickle running up his spine - she actually startled him - and says, in a really judgy nerd-voice, “This isn’t the New York Times, it’s clearly Buzzfeed. And if you’d read further than the first two sentences, you’d have seen that the whole thing is based on some estimate by a self-declared ‘soulmark expert’ with a degree from,” Here she pauses to actually scoff, “Florida State University.”

She leans away again and steps back, taking the faint smell of her shampoo with her. Which was nice - not that Jake will tell her.

“Also you’re at work and why do you even care?” she asks, folding her arms while directing all her judginess at him.

Yeah, why does he care anyway? It’s not because he’s lonely or anything and certainly not because he has any special feelings for anyone.

“Uh, because I’m over thirty and I’d like to find my soulmate, you know, it’s getting kind of tiresome to break hot girls’ hearts left and right. I think I’m ready to settle down with The One. Plus, she’s probably on a desperate search for me already.”

Charles nods eagerly, “Definitely!”

“Ugh, yeah right.” With that Santiago turns around and goes back to her desk. 

At this point, Jake can’t resist. “Hey, unlike you,” he calls after her, “I don’t already know exactly what my soulmate is going to look like!”

“Shut up,” Amy shoots back, blushing furiously. 

He grins when he sees her left hand wrap around her right wrist as if to cover up her shame. Too late because Jake’s already seen her soulmark - everyone at the precinct has, really - and it is _hilarious_. 

Amy’s soulmark is also a word, scrawled in what looks to Jake like Comic Sans, all lowercase, and it reads _pot._ It’s like the universe is trying to troll her.

Because he's super funny, Jake quickly does a google picture search for _stoner_. He turns his screen so Amy can see the first image that has come up, a douchy white guy with dreads.

“Stop it!” she hisses, hand now rubbing her wrist as if to erase a stain.

***

Jake has been trying to figure out soulmarks and soulmates on and off for pretty much all is life. As a kid, he tried to understand why his dad left them and what that said about the whole soulmate thing. 

His dad’s mark is a dark spot shaped like a plane on the inside of his elbow and his mom’s is the word _plane_ in elegant cursive curling around her wrist like a bracelet. They match, right? They belong together. So why?

His dad’s first affair was with a hairdresser named Theresa who was so basic, his mom said years later, that her soulmark was just a single straight line. 

“And guess what, your dad told me he thought it was a landing strip!”

“Maybe it was?” Even Jake couldn’t make it sound convincing, though he tried.

“Well, it’s not like he stayed with her. Just like he didn’t stay with the one whose mark was a captain’s hat or the one with the lyrics from Spirit in the sky or the one with the cloud or the one whose mark actually said _plain_ \- P-L-A-I-N.” She rolled her eyes.

“But he was looking. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Look for your soulmate until you find them.” Not like Jake could have afforded to do the whole backpacking around the world in search of your soulmate thing a lot of his classmates were doing, but still.

His mother huffed a breath. “Honestly? I don’t know. I keep thinking that if it really is fate, if it really is residual magic or excess energy from the universe or some ancient genetic thingamabug or whatever the newest theory is… Doesn’t it all just boil down to: if it’s meant to be, then it will happen no matter what you do? And maybe for some people it’s just not meant to be. Either way, it shouldn’t be this hard.”

***

It is hard though. For _a lot_ of people.

Soulmark related crime is its own category and there is no dearth of cases that end up in the pile. 

“Stalking, rape, kidnapping, identity theft, fraud, murder,” Jake says, fingers skipping along the backs of the files as he rifles through them. “Oh,” he exclaims as he pulls one from the cabinet. “Remember the guy who had both his arms covered in fake soulmark tattoos and defrauded sixteen women?”

“Yup,” Gina replies, “I kinda vibed with the lady who stabbed him. She had real class.”

“Um, sure.” Jake’s eyes dart to Gina’s soulmark as they often do because a) she always rolls up one sleeve to show it off and b) it’s the craziest thing he’s ever seen. He’s known her all his life and he still can’t believe it.

It says GINA LINETTI in giant (comparatively) all caps letters running from her left elbow down to her wrist and it sparkles in a way Jake has never seen on anyone else. 

“So I’m obviously looking for a guy with the phrase _is always right_ or _rules_ or something,” she used to say when they were kids.

Jake still doesn’t get how her mom didn’t freak out when she first saw it on her newborn baby. It’s… a lot.

“She just knew right away that I was chosen,” Gina always said with a casual shrug like she was stating the obvious.

“Maybe it just means that I’m my own soulmate,” she mused once. “Like, all you other losers are one half of something broken, but I’m actually already complete and perfect as I am.”

Weirdly, with Gina, Jake can totally see it.

***

At one point or another, Jake has asked everyone in the Nine-Nine about their soulmark.

Turns out Scully’s says _Kelly_ , which might be the name of his dog? Or wife? Scully’s soulmate could totally be a dog, Jake thinks.

Hitchcock’s is gun-shaped and definitely disturbing.

Charles’ says _4.2 oz cooked octopus_. Gina actually gagged when he showed it to them.

No one has ever seen Rosa’s. The third time Jake asked her, she said, “I burned it off when I was fifteen. If you ask me again, I’ll burn yours off too.” He has not asked since.

Terry has the letters LO on his right forearm. He shows them off proudly, flexing as he does so. 

Truth be told, Jake was a little disappointed when he first saw them.

“Aw, I was sure your mark would be yoghurt or muscle themed,” he said.

“What the hell? I’m a proud husband and father, an accomplished artist and your sergeant! How come all that boils down to muscles and yoghurt to you?”

Jake grinned awkwardly, tucking his bottom lip under his teeth. “I dunno,” he mumbled, “I guess, you just look the way you do and talk about yoghurt a lot. Sorry.” 

“Dammit. Sharon has VE. Together our marks spell LOVE, okay. Because Sharon and Terry love love!”

***

Then, of course, there’s Amy’s _pot._ Which will never get old ever. “Ever thought about looking into guys with the word _kettle_ , maybe?” She throws a pencil at him and he ducks so it ends up hitting Hitchcock.

***

Like Terry, Captain Holt is married.

Also like Terry, he is married to his soulmate.

It takes weeks of begging to get Holt to show them his soulmark. Before he does, he announces in that voice of his, “It has come to my attention that ongoing speculation about my soulmark is disrupting this precinct’s workflow, therefore I will give you thirty seconds to look at it. I will not answer any questions. I will not describe my husband’s soulmark as it is a part of his body and as such not for me to discuss. Understood?”

They all nod and even Rosa leans closer.

With an air of cool detachment, Holt rolls up his shirt sleeve to expose his bare left forearm. He twists it so they can see the inside of his arm. Jake squints. The writing is a shimmering silver and, barring Gina’s, it is the weirdest thing he has ever seen. It’s a math problem, a complicated one with brackets and symbols and stuff. Just looking at it makes Jake’s head hurt. He scrunches up his face in disgust, eyes tracing the thing without his brain taking anything in until he gets to the equal sign at the end where it cuts off. There is no solution. 

Santiago actually gasps. Jake can feel the waves of excitement roll off her body.

“So your husband’s mark is--” she starts, voice filled with awe, only to be cut off by Holt, “As I said, I will not answer any questions, Detective.”

When Holt rolls up his sleeve, his fingertips linger on the mark a little longer than necessary, Jake notices.

***

Okay, so Holt’s birthday party is a huge disaster, but at least Jake gets to see Kevin’s soulmark, which as it turns out is 69.3285631 which rounds down to 69, which is hilarious. Obviously.

Except, for some reason, Kevin does not seem to think so. Then there’s the whole mess with that New Yorker article and sneaking into Holt’s and Kevin’s bedroom.

 _69_ , though. 

Sixty-nine. 

Kevin must be a freak in the bedroom.

***

“But how did you know?” Jake asked Terry once.

“I don’t know, I just did.” Terry shrugged his massive shoulders. “You just do.”

“I mean LO is so vague. What if you meet someone whose mark is just L? Maybe it’s supposed to be LOL.”

“That’s what I’ve been sayin’” Gina interjected.

Terry gave her a pointed look. “No, Sharon is my soulmate. There is no one else.”

“Okay, so what does it feel like?”

“Safe,” Terry said after a moment of thinking. A smile graced his lips, so small, Jake didn’t even think Terry was aware of it. “Like everything is going to be okay.”

***

“You were sure about dad in the beginning, right?”

His mom sighed. “I thought I was,” she replied. 

***

It’s not easy to get Holt to open up about his private life, but, weirdly, after the whole debacle with the Wednesday incident Jake senses an opportunity. After all, Holt has just gifted him a painting of a rock.

“So I guess you and Kevin made up,” he more or less asks in the elevator the next day.

Holt gazes at him, his face as unreadable as always. But his mood was pretty great the previous day, after Kevin took him out to lunch, so Jake’s confident. After all, standing next to Kevin, Holt full on _smiled_ in the bullpen in front of everyone. Jake feels like that confirms his theory, namely that Kev is a beast in the bedroom.

When Holt doesn’t say anything, Jake decides to come out and just ask what he really wants to ask.

“Did you ever, you know, have a moment of doubt?”

“A moment of doubt?” Holt parrots.

“You know, that he’s really your soulmate. Seeing how complicated the whole thing seems to be. I mean, I wouldn’t know. Obviously.” And he’s already floundering. Amazing.

Holt continues to look at him with his intense dark eyes that seem to be able to stare right past Jake’s skull into his brain. 

“No,” he says finally. Jake fidgets, wanting to ask more.

But Holt anticipates him. “I’m aware that you are currently searching for your soulmate, Peralta, and I commend you for your effort.”

“You do?” Now Jake’s confused. Also trying not to point out that he just ended a casual relationship with a woman who was definitely not his soulmate. Which would have been a lie anyway since Sophia dumped _him._

Holt nods.

“When I was a very young man, I had a newspaper publish the math problem imprinted on my skin. I had come to the conclusion that it would be the quickest and most efficient way to find my soulmate. If he was somewhere out in the world, it was my duty to find him and not waste any time on relationships that would ultimately be unfulfilling and temporary, I thought.”

“But that’s not how you met Kevin,” Jake says, remembering the way too short summary Kevin had given them at the birthday party.

“No, I met another man with whom I spent eight years, until we realized that we both had miscalculated and that his soulmark was off by one decimal number. Of course, we ended the relationship immediately.”

“Okay.” Jake does not know whether to be impressed or horrified. Maybe both. Yeah, both works.

“After that, my life briefly descended into chaos. I dated a man whose soulmark was a question mark because I let him convince me that perhaps this was my answer to the problem. After all, I had not been able to come up with the correct solution. Luckily, the relationship fell apart after no more than a year.” Holt pauses to take a breath. “And then Kevin found me.”

“And you knew right away?”

“I did. However, my point is, Kevin never looked for me. He purposefully ignored everything even tangentially related to soulmarks and soulmates. He was determined to prioritize his career. And yet he found me.”

(Years later, one dark night alone in a safe house together, Kev will tell Jake the true reason for this. That he was terrified his soulmate would turn out to be male, something he deep down already knew, but wasn’t ready to admit, not to his homophobic parents, not even to himself.)

“So what you’re saying is, I shouldn’t look.”

“What I’m saying is,” Holt says in that grave voice of his that feels like a fatherly hand on Jake’s shoulder, “you are not failing, Jacob.”

***

Jenny Gildenhorn is coming to Charles’ dad’s and Gina’s mom’s wedding and Jake cannot believe it.

“Why are you so excited about that?” Amy asks, brows knit.

“Her soulmark is an o. She could be my soulmate! I think this is meant to be.”

“Or it’s just a circle or a round zero,” Gina throws over her shoulder as she walks by.

“No, it’s an o. This is it.” Jake’s ready. He’s so ready for this.

***

He’s not ready for this. 

Not ready for another Fung, not ready for Great Aunt Susan’s hands on his butt and definitely not ready for Amy mouthing “Maybe she’s The One.” at him.

After the dance, Jake mingles for a bit, but somehow, later, he comes back to Amy. A slow song is playing and she’s watching the dancefloor, mesmerized, drink forgotten in her hand.

When he gets closer, he realizes why.

Holt and Kevin are on there, slow dancing, which is the last thing Jake expected. But then, with not much else to do but drink and the party slowly dissipating around them, they probably thought they could risk it. The alcohol might have helped.

Holt is stooping a little to rest his chin on Kevin’s shoulder, his eyes are closed, an expression on his face Jake doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s so calm and peaceful.

Watching them, bathed in specks of light, Amy next to him, it’s like something settles inside Jake, too. Everything is going to be okay.

“Never forget that Kevin’s soulmark is sixty-nine,” Jake whispers in Amy’s ear, making her jump and slap his arm.

“Stop it. Also, it’s 69.3285631.”

“Wow, you are such a stalker,” Jake laughs, actually impressed.

“I just have a good mind for numbers, okay?”

“I’m sure your soulmate will appreciate that. ‘Cause he’s gonna be a drug dealer.”

Amy rolls her eyes. “Seriously? Because _Bing_ is so much better, right? Maybe you should search the countryside.”

Jake gives her the blankest of blank looks.

“For a country girl,” she tries before faltering and mumbling, “The Country Girl. It’s a Bing Crosby movie.”

“Devastating burn,” Jake says. It is. Kind of. It’s devastating how cute she is.

His gaze is drawn back to Kevin and Holt dancing as if the whole insane world around them doesn’t even exist.

Well, maybe it’s not so insane if it brought them together, he thinks.

Again, he glances over at Amy. Somehow, the world is feeling all warm and soft right now. Maybe it's the alcohol.

Or maybe there is hope yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Truth be told, I want to write the whole Holt/Kevin story to go with this.


End file.
